French star Patrick Bruel denies multiple sexual assault allegations

The French singer and actor Patrick Bruel, the subject of multiple rape allegations, protested his innocence on Sunday and said he would not step away from his work. The Paris prosecutor’s office announced earlier on Sunday that Bruel was the subject of at least four complaints of sexual assault in France , and that the cases would be investigated together. “I have never forced a woman,” Bruel wrote in a statement shared on his Instagram page . “And if I have hurt anyone, I sincerely regret it.” Bruel, who has had a string of top-selling albums and appeared in more than 40 films, also faces a separate investigation in Belgium after a complaint about an alleged sexual assault in Brussels was filed in March. The 67-year-old, who is acting in a play in Paris, is scheduled to begin a concert tour on 16 June that will take him around France, as well as to Switzerland, Belgium and Canada. A petition is circulating, backed by feminist groups, calling for the concerts to be cancelled. But Bruel insisted on Sunday he would “continue to do my job, with the same dedication and the same passion”. Since March the French investigative news website Mediapart has published allegations from women who have accused Bruel of sexual harassment and sexual assault. Bruel’s statement on Sunday addressed allegations made in Mediapart by the television presenter Flavie Flament. On Sunday Bruel said their relationship was “neither violent, nor coercive, nor underhanded”. …